Role playing

A role play is a created situation in which students deliberately act out or assume characters or identities they would not normally assume in order to accomplish learning goals. At its essence, role play is an example of “learning by doing”. The word role indicates that students must actively apply knowledge, skills, and understanding to successfully speak and act from a different, assigned perspective. The term play indicates that students use their imaginations and have fun, acting out their parts in a nonthreatening environment.

Role playing provides an action environment for students to experience the emotional and intellectual responses of an assumed identity or imagined circumstance.

• It provides opportunities for learning in both the affective domain, where emotions and values are involved, as well as in the cognitive domain where experiences are analysed.
• It gives students opportunities to deal with complex social, emotional, ethical and moral issues in concrete ways in a safe environment.
• It enables students to explore differences in points of views and their consequences, and be more sensitive to the feeling of others.

1. Teacher decides the learning outcomes and develops role playing scenario.
2. Teacher asks students to form groups with enough members in each group to assume each role.
3. Teacher presents the scenario and explain each roles. Must allow time for discussion of the problem situation and for students to ask questions on their specific roles or on any aspects of scenario that are unclear.
4. Teacher explains to audience on what is expected of them and highlight specific points that they need to look for. Make sure that students are clear on their tasks.
5. Instruct students to enact the role play.
6. Discuss, evaluate and debrief.
   • Follow the role play with a discussion within the small groups and/or with the whole class. Discussion should focus on the students’ interpretations of the roles and the motivations for and consequences of their actions.
7. Consider asking students to re-enact the role play, changing characters or redefining the scenario and then holding another discussion.
8. Teacher assesses and evaluates students’ learning.
9. Teacher may ask students to reflect further on what they have learnt by having them write a journal entry.

Adapted from Barkley et al (2005), Killen (2006); and SERC (n.d).